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Looking forward to next Thursday’s locals – politicalbetting.com
Looking forward to next Thursday’s locals – politicalbetting.com
Last night Smarkets held an event to look at next week’s local elections. The areas that are having them are in colour in the Wikipedia map above. I found it a weird experience because where I live like in most parts of England there are not elections next week and it is harder to share the excitement.
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Edit. Beaten again. Damn. Not going to invest in any lottery tickets today.
Right now speaking firmly and unambiguously has been successful British policy all year long, since before any Russian troops went into Ukraine.
And what's more is it is working. It has shamed Germany into shutting down Nordstream II, it has shamed them this week into agreeing to send heavy armaments into Ukraine after they'd been messing around.
Speaking softly was for the past. Speaking firmly, exercising our big stick and diplomatically ensuring those who are meant to be our allies send their sticks however big to Ukraine is the order of the day now.
It will be interesting to see how things work over such a wide area. Having lived under a couple of the to-be-abolished district councils, there are big differences in e.g. waste and recycling policies (afterall, that's all we care about regarding local councils, right?
Edit: Donkey in blue rosette country, of course. We only have Con, Lab and one Green candidate, for two seats.
Not sure that we are going to be able to tell much, if anything from this.
There seems to be slightly more activity in Edinburgh. From those who have been out on the doorstep the Tories may be in for a hiding for reasons that have very little to do with the poor Councillors.
Why call for the West to do so? Because we aren't the only nation in the West and where the UK has led the rest of the West has followed for much of the year. If the UK wants the West, including the UK, to send planes to Ukraine then whose job is it to lead the call on that if not either the Prime Minister or the Foreign Secretary?
If you don't, you're in denial.
This graph has a gradient that is positive. Slowly, more and more Ukraine lands are being occupied.
In two months, the area under Russian control – originally just Crimea and 20 % or so of Donetsk and Luhansk – has grown to perhaps three or four times the size.
If Russia continues to suffer “defeats” at this pace, then in another six months the entire south/east will be in ruins & under Russian occupation.
https://www.itv.com/news/2022-02-28/not-naming-names-but-it-was-liz-truss-minister-blamed-for-putin-nuclear-move
Liz Truss is a joke. Completely out of her depth. Just look again at that bizarre cheese speech and you will realise what a hopeless leader she would be.
In your desperation to replace Boris for goodness sake don't over-promote someone inept.
She is out of her depth. It is hard to see many in either the govt or opposition who would be comfortable with this brief or make a good fist of it at the moment.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/boris-johnson-tempting-evil-by-revealing-ukrainian-soldiers-trained-in-poland/ar-AAWEPjk?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=ce679f53ac1e4be4b1bdd0b1d27250d9
"100 year old non-peer-reviewed scribble by a Jewish patent office clerk." - his work has been, again, extended and peer reviewed. Also tested for practicality.
Leading from the front; I really don't see hime as a tactician.
Some potential leaders should be feared by Labour.
Liz Truss isn't one of them.
Philosophy has evolved over the millenia and isn't still bound by Athenian principles.
And don't get me started on religion. No we shouldn't be bound to that either.
But I have to go so if you want a battle of aphorisms then I will leave you with this one: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” - Edmund Burke
Commonly misquoted as “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”
Britain is seeking the defeat of Russia and a Ukrainian victory. Any utterances by Boris or Truss must be seen with that objective in mind. If you'd prefer a Russian victory then that can be your preference, but that isn't policy.
One could after all, have looked at a map of the Eastern front in August 1943, and drawn the wrong conclusion, based upon who had made the greatest territorial gain.
What are the war aims - do they include retaking Crimea, for example ?
We've never made anything like that clear, still less the rest of the NATO coalition supplying Ukraine. And as some have pointed out, those decisions are far more within the ambit of the US and Ukraine itself - who are supplying the bulk of the weapons, and all of those doing the dying.
'Russia should be seen to lose the war' is fine as a principle (and I don't disagree), but it's not a policy.
Conducting that debate should be within cabinet, and with our allies. To do so by speeches like those just made by Truss is little more than grandstanding.
Here is another: "speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
Both on the face of it universal advice about human interactions and relationships. The first is 3 or 4 thousand years old (Proverbs where it comes from probably a shade under 3,000, but with possibly much much older Egyptian sources) and still current and good advice, as "pride goes before a fall". The second looks to me equally universal, non-time-specific good advice, but apparently is past its sell by date in about a century. Why?
They obviously currently occupy more than they started with. I think they also occupy less than they did a month ago.
In a similar way, imagine a graph of my (imaginary) personal finances. At birth, I didn't have a penny to my name, and no debt either. Now, aged 35, I have a mortgage debt of ten times what I've got in cash in the bank... lets say a net -£70k. It doesn't mean that projecting forward from those two points to myself aged 70, I will by then have a debt of £140k.
A much more relevant data point than my status at birth might be that 10 years ago, I had a mortgage debt of £100k... so in ten years, I've paid off £30k... projecting that forward would mean that at 70, I'd have +£5k in the bank... still almost certainly wildly inaccurate, but now at least the direction of travel is correct.
If one is going to try and project Russian progress, the start of the invasion isn't a terribly helpful data point - to assess current progress, measuring territory occupied since they pulled back from their northern attack is probably more relevant.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1519595000148938762
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht revealed the terrible condition of the German army:
"On paper, we have 350 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, 150 can be used. Of the 51 Tiger helicopters, only 9 are combat-ready," she said.
https://spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundeswehr-laut-christine-lambrecht-nur-150-schuetzenpanzer-puma-angeblich-einsatzbereit-a-5614855e-80f3-4160-9727-933d62b1261e
But therein lies the warning for Labour and the carrot for the Conservatives. With a new leader and a honeymoon period, and with a decent and honest person at the helm they could purge the toxicity, and still go on to do well at the General Election. Especially if they go big on the international dimension to the crises we have gone through and are still doing.
My forecasts on the next election being a disaster for the tories are all based around them keeping Boris. If they ditch him all bets are off.
Ben Wallace worries me. I loathe his politics but he's good.
The sanctions against Russia, on the other hand, are entirely in the hands of those who imposed them. If the West collectively decide that the sanctions remain while Putin leads Russia, and Russia holds Crimea and Donbass, then they’ll stay in place until the troops withdraw from that Ukranian territory and have a new President elected fairly.
I love having a lazy day off!
It’s generally made in small volumes of bespoke components, and much less reliable than commercial equipment for non-mil use. Over time, the expensive spares run out and kit gets cannibalised. Politically speaking, getting a load of spare parts for existing kit just isn’t as sexy as spending the money on nice new shiny stuff.
Russia has the added problem of the cash ending up buying nice dachas in Sochi, rather than the equipment for which it was intended. Western governments generally pay the asking price from the vendor, while the politicians and generals are looked after later with consultancy contracts.
I probably would not cherry pick the data, but plot everything since the annexation of Crimea. Then run a window function if I wanted to look on certain timescales. Remember, the easiest person to fool is yourself.
Ukraine is losing this war, territorially. It is true that Russia is losing the war as well, but in a different way.
It's a shame that not a single mention seems to have been made of the S Yorks mayoral election, which is the biggest in the country in this round - four times the size of Croydon, for example - and where our internal polling has the Tories running third.
Putinists like you might be wanting to think that Ukraine is losing the war but reality is something different.
My point was more that it's advice, not universally accepted dogma - it seems unfair to criticise Truss specifically for not following it. By all means, continue to criticise her for results if she's not getting them.
The amount and type of territory occupied and/or advanced through matters terribly to those who are occupied, and is one factor in the progress of the war, but it is only one.
Agree though. Inspiring, quite possibly. Maybe not a great tactician, but perhaps nowadays that's less important if he has a good team around him.
Yes, of course there is an ethical dimension, but given that we are hand in glove with the Saudis, which is a vastly more repressive and authoritarian regime than Russia, meddles militarily with its neighbours (albeit through proxies), sponsors terror, and exports a poisonous brand of Islam, the moral argument seems dubious.
I don't know what the future of the war holds, and sometimes there are indeed massive reversals.
However, on current progress, my guess would be Russia gradually takes most of the south and east over the next six months.
Putin now has 90 per cent of Luhansk, 60 per cent of Donetsk and he has a land bridge to Crimea. So, in terms of his stated aims, he is nearly there.
Of course, his stated aims may not be his true aims. He may want more.
There’s little progress being made in the areas they do control, and they are taking large numbers of losses simply to maintain what they have. They are rapidly running out of trained soldiers and serviceable equipment.
With yet another few planeloads and trainloads of Western weapons heading across the border from Poland, Ukraine has pretty much unlimited supplies of arms and a considerable army on which to call.
The future looks considerable better for the Ukranian army, than for the Russian army, who are struggling to hold the territory they have gained.
For example, the Russians committing troops to Crimea in a defensive capacity, even if they don't need to, would be good.
Say I live in a village which has a known dangerous and violent bully. If I arbitrarily walk up to the bully and say "You are a dickless wanker and your mother smells of wee" and get beaten to a pulp, my fellow villagers are quite likely to think *both* that he shouldn't have done that and the village needs a strategy to deal with him, *and* that I am a complete twat.
Number of Ukranians who have fled? Fraction of Ukraine territory destroyed (though not captured)?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/columnists/2022/04/26/following-boriss-local-campaign-trail-tory-infatuation-has/
(Admittedly that's not about Scotland as such.)
I would also comment current UK foreign policy is remarkably unsuccessful. No-one apart from the Australians is engaging with it.
Russia hold less territory than it held a month ago, and has taken very big losses of men and equipment in the process.
I've been blinkered by my loathing of Boris Johnson into failing to see the talent and decency that still exists in the Conservative Party. Those people need to stand up now. It's not only for them but for the future of our politics and country.
We really cannot go on like this for another two years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-61256972
Does this mean another by-election in the offing?
Apart from the team's inability to bat, to bowl on anything other than a green wicket and to take catches he will be fine.
Also, in Michael Moorcock there's a Baron Meliadus of Kroiden, Grand Constable of the Order of the Wolf., First Chieftain of the Armies of Granbretan, which I always thought rather cool
Ukraine is losing men and equipment, but not at the same rate as the enemy. Most of the fighting has been at a distance for them, with shoulder-launched missiles aimed at Russian vehicles.
The civilian casualties, sadly, are well into the tens of thousands, and there is significant damage to property and infrastructure.
The price of Putin’s adventurism has been clear: the reestablishment of the pre-2014 borders. Liz is just stating OTAN policy. I’m not close enough to the inner circle to know whether that was explicitly authorised and agreed, but the lack of denials suggest that it was.
During the pandemic the Council introduced a booking scheme at the local tip, which was perfectly sensible. It's keeping it though, which isn't. The scheme suits the Council (cost-saving) and the site managers (profits and convenience) but it is bad for the local residence. It's awkward and inconvenient. It discourages responsible disposal of waste and encourages fly-tipping.
It is very much a Council issue and the type of thing that can easily impact results in local elections.
You can want Russia to win because you're scared of Mad Vlad's nukes, but I'm glad then that you're not in Truss's shoes.